In
a far off village there lives a pretty girl. One day two young men came to her
father to ask for her hand in marriage.

"That's very
hard," he said. "There are two of you and I have only one daughter.
You can't both have her. Come back tommorow and we shall see."

The two men came
the following day as they had been told, and the father said to them, "Here
is a piece of cloth for each of you. The first one to sew himself a coat will
win my daughter."

Then he called
his daughter to come thread the needles. But the girl was clever. She threaded
the needle of the young man she liked best with a short thread, and that of
the other man with a long thread.

In the afternoon,
when her father came to see how they were getting on, he found that the young
man with the short thread was finished his task while the other was only halfway
through. So the clever daughter became the bride of the young man she liked!